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Tuesday, 25 October 2016

Louis Creek from 1924

Further online research confirms that when my great
grandparents returned to Canada in 1924 they settled in Louis Creek, British
Columbia, and spent the rest of their lives there.

They never got to meet any of their daughter Jessie’s
children (my grandmother), as she had married a Rongomai (via Eketahuna, the
address specifies) farmer, John Evans and remained behind in New Zealand. How
she must have missed them: her first child was born only a couple of weeks after
her family departed by the ship, leaving her with no relatives in the southern
hemisphere.

I have to remind my children that in those days,
communication was so much slower and more expensive. Trans-pacific travel generally
entailed travel by ocean liner, rural phone lines were party lines: one line
shared by several families. You identified the calls meant for your household by
your own morse code call sign. When you wanted to make a call, you first needed
to make sure one of your neighbours wasn’t already using the line, then speak
to the operator at the local exchange to put your call through. No such thing
as Privacy laws then! Even up to the early 1980’s, toll calls had to be made via
a real live operator, and the capacity of the international lines was so
limited that calls at peak time, like Christmas, had to be booked in advance. Calls
abroad were also limited by their expense: at around $3 per minute in 80’s
prices, makes then more like $30 a minute in today’s money (2016)

My grandmother did make the return trip to Canada once in
her parents’ lifetime. In 1935 when my mother Audrey, the youngest child was
only 4, Jessie travelled to Louis Creek to see her dying father. All the
children stayed in New Zealand. My aunty Ruth says she thinks her father
forebade her to take the children as he wasn’t confident of her returning to
New Zealand otherwise. It was also during the lean depression years, so money
would have also been an issue.

I do not yet know why the Coulsons decided to base
themselves in Louis Creek. As well as my great grandparents John Archer Coulson
and Jane (nee Jacklin) their younger children Esther and Tom lived at Louis
Creek too. The older sisters who had remained in Canada in 1912 were the three
eldest: Bertha, Ethel and Maggie. They had all married before the family departed
and were settled. Sadly Ethel died in 1922.

My grandma Jessie had a different narrative arc. She only travelled
to New Zealand around 1919: I believe it was after the war. She never lived in
Australia. She had stayed on as a student teacher in Strathcona, and was living
with her married sister Bertha in the 1916 census. I believe she was also
tasked with winding up her parents financial affairs in Strathcona. Travelling as
an unaccompanied young woman from Canada to New Zealand must have been quite an
adventure. More of her story another day.